With development of the wireless communication technologies, use of various wireless signal transmission apparatuses such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and notebook computers has become widespread in people's daily life. Accordingly, network services realized through the wireless signal transmission apparatuses become also increasingly diversified. For example, one can download music pieces from a network or watch online movies in real time by use of a wireless signal transmission apparatus. These network services not only provide more convenient network applications, but also increase the added value of the wireless signal transmission apparatuses.
Generally, the aforesaid wireless signal transmission apparatuses can be carried about by users, so they can be collectively classified as mobile stations (MSs). When an MS desires to execute or open a new network service, it needs to request a new bandwidth from a base station (BS) to which it connects in order to transmit information necessary for the network service. Specifically, referring to FIG. 1, a schematic view of a WiMAX wireless network 1 is shown therein. The WiMAX wireless network 1 comprises a BS 11 and an MS 13. When the MS 13 desires to request a bandwidth allocation from the BS 11, the MS 13 transmits a bandwidth request signal 130 to the BS 11 so that the BS 11 learns that a bandwidth allocation is requested by an MS. However, the bandwidth request signal 130 does not comprise a size of the bandwidth that is requested and a station identification of the MS 13, so currently the BS 11 is only able to transmit an uplink grant signal 110 at first.
Then, upon receiving the uplink grant signal 110, the MS 13 learns that the BS 11 has agreed to the request of uplink transmission, so the MS 13 further transmits a bandwidth request message 132 comprising a size of the requested bandwidth and the station identification of the MS 13. Upon receiving the bandwidth request message 132, the BS 11 learns that it is the MS 13 that is requesting the bandwidth allocation and also learns the size of the requested bandwidth. Then, the BS 11 further determines whether the bandwidth can be allocated to the MS 13 according to current resource usage conditions of the WiMAX wireless network 1. If the bandwidth can be allocated, the BS 11 transmits an allocation grant signal 112 to the MS 13 which, upon receiving the allocation grant signal 112, then conducts data transmissions 134 with the BS 11 through the bandwidth thus obtained.
As described above, a bandwidth allocation between the BS 11 and the MS 13 can be accomplished through at least four exchanges of control signals in four frames. In the modern society where network services become increasingly diversified, if the MS requests bandwidth in order to execute massive network services simultaneously, an excessive amount of network resources would be wasted in transmission of control signals, thus leading to degradation in overall transmission performance of the WiMAX wireless network 1.
Accordingly, an there is a need in the art to provide a solution that allows an MS to request a bandwidth allocation from a BS in an efficient way so as to improve overall transmission performance of the wireless network.